


buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

by jugheadjones



Series: don't leave me hanging on the telephone [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, High School, Sad, parentdale, teenage feelings, young riverparents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 09:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: When Fred Andrews calls into Project Youthagain, Mary's determined not to make the same mistakes as last time. She'll pass over the phone and let someone else deal with it.Mary has more important things to think about in her senior year. Just because Fred got hot over the summer and sounds awfully vulnerable on the other end of a youth helpline, doesn't mean he can get under her skin. Doesn't mean he's not as immature and obnoxious as he's always been.Because the truth is, she doesn't care about him. Not even a little bit. Not at all.





	buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

**Author's Note:**

> this is a sad companion piece to [never drill for oil on a city street](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12198564), which I highly recommend reading first! 
> 
> title from al stewart 'time passages'

It’s a month into Mary’s senior year of high school, and she’s still getting used to the routine. 

It had been a long, warm summer, and Riverdale had changed in an abundance of minuscule ways. Hermione had flown to a dozen different exotic places. FP Jones had cut off all his hair. Mary had tanned for the first time in her life - though she maintained her overabundance of freckles had probably just spread together. Fred Andrews had a band - FP and a ragtag bunch of long-haired musicians who had no doubt been torturing the ears of all his neighbours from his crowded garage. Last she’d heard, Tom Keller played drums. 

Oh, and unimportant detail, but -  Fred was hot now. 

No, not hot, per-se. Hot was a Hermione word, implied desire, implied  _ sex _ , implied a lot of things Mary would never associate with her least favourite classmate. They ran in different circles: Fred a class clown and serial dater teetering on the knife edge of popular; Mary more likely to get a high-five from a teacher than a classmate for her high grades, extracurricular involvement, and vocal feminist agenda. Mary had found Fred obnoxious and immature since he used to yank her braids in grade school - the year he’d emotionally peaked, she insisted to Hermione every time she saw  _ Fred Andrews _ hovering over Friday her datebook. Fred had all the discipline and sensitivity of a particularly misogynistic second-grader. 

But she wasn’t blind. Fred had muscles now, he was taller and tanner and had grown into all the awkward gangly parts of his body. That constituted hot, or at least Hermione believed it enough to teeter a bit in her conviction that Hiram was the one for her after all, penciling him in for Friday after Friday as the summer wore down. Maybe most shockingly, Mary had had a conversation with Fred at Hiram’s big birthday bash at the beginning of June, and he had actually talked to her like a normal, civilized person. Had even made her laugh. 

Fred Andrews had reached manhood. Would wonders never cease. 

She hadn’t seen him much over the summer - once or twice at the beach (enough to know he really did have muscles in all the right places) and the party and that was that. Whatever he’d been up to since June - the band, no doubt, and the van, and however all those muscles had come to be - had kept him out of her path. In Mary’s turn, she’d focused all of her attention since September toward beefing up the law school applications she’d be sending off at Christmas. That meant grades and extracurriculars were king. Boys had been shuttled to the very bottom of her list of things to be concerned about - not that they’d ever been too high on that list anyway, Hermione always grouched. Mary figured high school boys weren’t worth her time. 

Her routine had taken her back to Project Youth: a volunteer-run helpline for troubled kids that Mary’s parents had helped found. Mary was one of the youngest volunteers on the staff, but also one of the most level-headed. Mary always looked forward to her sessions, even though she usually felt too exhausted to do her homework afterward. It was a nice way to give back. 

It’s nearing five-fifteen, which is usually the time Mary heads off for home. Today, though, there’s one last call coming in. Mary locks eyes with Natasha, the girl who she’d been working her shift with, who smiles and nods toward the phone.

“Can you get that one?” 

“You bet,” says Mary, reaching for the receiver. Mary had taken three calls in the last hour: one from a girl whose parents were divorcing and who needed a friendly ear, one from a boy who had plagiarized a paper and was trying to figure out how to come clean about it, and one from a younger Riverdale student whose parents didn’t approve of his girlfriend.

Mary had felt a small twinge of curiosity about that last one, but had forced herself not to follow up on it. Hermione and her friends were always bugging her for information about the people who phoned in to Project Youth, but Mary was firm in her morals. Students phoned Project Youth in confidence. It would be outright disgraceful to use anything she learned for gossip purposes, no matter how juicy or innocuous the tidbit was. 

“Project Youth,” says Mary into the phone. She opens her notebook and uncaps a pink pen, placing it carefully within reach. She liked to have a pen handy in case tough stuff came up, but for the most part, the callers just needed a friend. Mary was good at being fair and friendly. 

Instead of another voice on the end of the line, she’s met with total silence. Mary listens carefully, thinking she can catch the soft noise of breathing. “Project Youth,” she repeats. 

“Um-” The caller stops. 

And then a very small voice. “Hi.” 

Mary feels a rush of empathy, a stirring sadness somewhere in between her ribs. “Hi,” she says sympathetically, trying to keep her voice warm and neutral. “My name’s Mary. I work for the helpline. Did you want to talk about something?”

“Mary?” The voice is startled and familiar. Mary strains to place it, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Is this Mary Moore?” 

His voice is somewhat deeper and she hadn’t recognized it. “Fred?” Her heart does this odd skittering thing, as though she’s dropped it. So much for sensitivity. “Is this you?” 

“Yeah.” He sounds surprised, and Mary feels her cheeks heat up at the nearness of his warm voice in her ear. “I didn’t know you worked here.” 

“I do. I have-" Mary remembers the last time they’d spoken over this phone line, and quickly adjusts the timeline. “Uh -since the summer.” 

“Oh.” Fred swallows, and Mary notes the wetness in it with a slight twinge of discomfort. “That’s cool. I’ve only called once before.” 

“Do you, uh-” Mary pushes herself awkwardly back and forth on the swivel chair with her feet. She tucks a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “Do you want me to pass you to someone else?” 

He sounds almost heartbroken. “Do you want to?” 

“Well, I don’t know,” says Mary, taken aback. “You’d probably rather talk to someone who doesn't know you well, right?” _ And I’d probably rather not hear your stupid girl problems _ , she adds silently, fighting the urge to roll her eyes to the ceiling. “It might be awkward if we run into one another at school.” 

A small silence. She hears him swallow. Then his voice, smaller. 

“I think- I’d rather talk to someone I know than a stranger.” 

“Okay.” Mary feels a prickle of discomfort at the back of her neck. She can’t help remembering the last time she’d spoken to Fred over this helpline: the one where she’d lied about who she was and he’d confessed to having some huge crush on her. That was something she could have done without, especially because she sometimes still woke up feeling guilty about it. It was one of those stupid situations that no one but Fred could put you in. She almost wants to reach through the phone line and wallop him, wet catch in his voice or not. 

Why couldn’t he be normal and ask for someone else? Mary sure wouldn’t want to tell someone she knew about the most sensitive parts of her life. But Fred had always been a heart-on-your-sleeve kind of person. 

He isn’t oversharing now, though. She hears him take an awkward breath in through the phone before he speaks. “Hey, if you don’t want to hear it, I understand-” 

“No, I do,” she hurries, twisting the phone cord around her finger. “That’s my job. I’m happy to listen, Fred.” She softens her voice a bit so he’ll know she’s being honest, that she’s not trying to get rid of him. Fred was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve that. “I mean it.” 

“Okay.” He takes a long, shaky breath on the other end of the line. “I just need to talk to someone about this.” 

Great. It’s going to be some love triangle bullshit. Mary can smell it.  _ Hermione and Sierra are mad at me because I’m trying to date them both at once. _ Only Fred would call a teen helpline for love advice! Maybe Hiram’s party had been a fluke. Maybe he was the same idiot he always was. 

“You know how I quit the basketball team?” 

“I heard about that.” Mary frowns. Fred was one of Riverdale’s best players, and she knew full well he’d probably spent the summer practicing in anticipation for the new season. According to Harry Clayton, he’d just up and quit about a week after the team had been selected. “What happened?” 

Fred’s quiet for another moment, as though gathering the courage to speak. “My dad’s sick,” he says at last. 

The bottom drops out of Mary’s stomach. 

“What do you mean, sick?” 

“I mean he’s - he’s not doing well. He was in and out of the hospital all summer.” Fred’s voice wavers, but doesn’t break. “They don’t know how to help him. Or how long he has, really. I’ve been working to make up the money, but I can’t do both. I work every day after school. So I quit the team.” 

He says it so matter-of-factly that it takes a moment for his words to land. Mary feels like she’s been hit by a ton of bricks. This was the last thing she’d expected. 

“Fred, I’m so sorry.”

She almost hears his shrug. “I’m comforting myself by telling myself I probably would have got tossed off anyway. My grades are junk. I know I need to pick them up for college, but… I don’t even know if I’m going to get to go anymore.” 

“Your parents need you to work?” Mary can’t think of something more awful than not having the money for college. Her skin prickles with dread. But Fred cuts her off. 

“No, that’s just it. My parents want me to go. They don’t want this to get in the way of my future, you know? I haven’t even told my dad I dropped the basketball team. It would break his heart. He wants to me to keep living a normal life. I heard him tell mom he’d rather die than be a burden on the two of us. So I try to act like nothing’s wrong in front of him. Like I love doing the work. Like I don’t even want to go to school anyway.” 

He swallows again, and Mary’s heart feels like it’s sitting on her tongue. “Is it very bad?”

“They say he might live ‘till I make it out of college. Maybe even longer. They don’t really know. He might even see me have kids if I’m really lucky. Or he might die in a year or two.” His voice breaks. “God, I can’t believe I’m talking about it like this. That’s my  _ dad _ .” 

“Fred-” 

“It’s fucked, Mary, you know that?” She can hear him start crying, and the sound makes her heart fall all the way down to her shoes. “It’s so fucked. I never thought - I never - thought it would-” 

Wherever that sentence is going, he can’t finish it. She hears him take a long, cool breath out. “No one else knows yet. I haven’t told anyone. Please don’t tell them, okay, Mary? Just - not until I’m ready.” 

“I won’t. I won’t, Fred, I promise.”  _ As if your promises mean much _ , she scolds herself.  _ You’re the one who lied to him last year to eavesdrop on his love life.  _ Mary notices she’s knotted her hand into a fist and carefully releases it, fiddling with her pen instead. “Everything you say here doesn’t leave this room.” 

“I don’t mind working,” he says softly, as matter-of-fact and as truthful as if every teenager should be mixing cement seven days a week to support their parents. There’s a maturity behind his words that she’s never heard in him before. It’s disturbingly like speaking to an adult, or a stranger. “I don't mind doing it. They raised me for seventeen years, right?” 

“Fred, that’s-”

“The hard part is not talking about it. I feel like it’s this big secret, and it’s choking me. And I don’t want it to be some card I play at school. I couldn’t finish some assignment yesterday, and Flutesnoot asked me why. I could have told him and got away with it. But it felt wrong.” 

She’s never heard Fred so level-headed, so sensible as he is now. “I’m so fucking tired, Mary,” he whispers. “I feel so guilty all the time. And I feel like he deserved a better son than what he got.” 

“Fred, that’s not true.” 

“I was going to tell him this year. That I’m -” His voice breaks, and he tries again. “That I’m- you know, I-“ 

Mary waits patiently. “That I like boys,” Fred finishes hoarsely. “And I feel like I can’t anymore.” 

Mary feels as though she’s been sucker-punched. 

“Why do you feel like you can’t?” 

“I don’t want him to know,” he admits. “I don’t want him to die and be disappointed in me.”

“Oh, Fred,” Mary whispers. She can hear him crying openly on the other end, the faint sound of a bell below it, and a rattling that sounds like traffic. “Fred, where are you?” 

“The Chok’lit shoppe. I couldn’t call from home. Don’t worry, nobody’s here.” Fred sniffs. “Shit, Mary, I’m sorry.  _ God. _ ” 

She pictures him wiping his face with the sleeve of his baseball tee, new muscles under it, his back against the tacky plastic of Pop’s payphone, huddled in so that no one in the restaurant can see his face. Full-grown and childlike at the same time. Trapped. 

“It’s okay, Fred.” She’s digging the pen so hard into her notebook that she’s split the page. 

“It’s so selfish, isn’t it? To care about that when he’s d-“ His voice catches and he swallows wetly. “He’s-“ 

Mary jumps in before he’s forced to say the word, letting the pen hit the desk with a clatter. “It’s not selfish, Fred.”

“It  _ is _ , though,” His voice is very wet, pitching up and cracking like glass under high heat on the  _ is _ . “ _ No _ , it is. I’m making it about me-“ 

“You’re scared,” says Mary softly. “And you’re hurting. You’re going through something you never expected. That you couldn’t have expected. That’s scary. It’s okay.” 

“Thanks.” A deep breath, that odd adult detachment. “Like I said, it helps just to talk about it. You’re being really great.” 

As if she’s the one who needs encouragement. 

“Fred-” Mary has no idea what to say but she knows she has to say something. “Thank you for telling me. I know it probably took a lot of-

“It’s fine.” He keeps talking in that oddly adult voice, as shrewd and grown-up as he’d sounded around Hiram’s bonfire. “I won’t have a lot of time to do stuff this year. I’m going to be working a lot. And I don’t know who I’m ready to tell yet. Or what’s going to happen. I wish you could tell me, but I guess you can’t.” She hears the bell sound again, and a rustle on the other end of the phone. “I should go.” 

“Fred, if you need tutoring, or someone to talk to, or a friend-” Mary tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear with shaking hands. “I’m here for you no matter what.” 

“Thanks, Mary.” She thinks she hears him smile. “You’re swell, you know that?” 

“Don’t go-” she blurts out. God, she can’t let him hang up like this. She hadn’t helped him at all. She hadn’t given him any advice, or even any of the soothing phrases in her 54-page Project Youth bible. “Fred-” 

He waits, breathing soft and calm, and Mary’s courage falters. This isn’t something you can fix with a soundbite. This isn’t something you fix at all. You hold it like water until it runs out of your cupped hands. 

“I’m sorry,” she admits finally. “I wish I could have been more help.” 

“It’s okay.” She thinks of him splitting concrete at the site, his birthday guitar growing dust in the garage. The dimple in his cheek when he smiled in the firelight. “Not something you can really help.” 

Mary glances at her watch and does the first impulsive thing she’s ever done in her life. 

“Stay there,” she says, standing up and slipping her shoes back on. “Stay at Pop’s.” 

“Why?” 

“I’m off now,” she says. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.” 

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess but i've been re-writing it for weeks and it wasn't getting any better 
> 
> comments help fred feel better


End file.
